A new report shows that the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Washington, D.C., are "higher than West Africa" HIV rates, and that heterosexual transmission of the disease is increasing, although the highest incidence new infections is still among men who have sex with men.

The Washington Post reported on the new study, which only accounts for Washington, D.C. residents who have gotten tested, prompting the report’s authors to note, "we know that the true number of residents currently infected and living with HIV is certainly higher."

A one percent rate of infection would be enough to regard the epidemic as "generalized and severe," the article noted.

Hader noted, "We have every mode of transmission going up, all on the rise, and we have to deal with them."

The principle modes of HIV transmission are unprotected sex between men, unprotected heterosexual sex, and intravenous drug use, the article said. The new report shows a 22% increase in HIV/AIDS over three years ago.

The increase is discernible in all demographics, whether racial or geographical. African-American men were hardest hit, the study indicated: the demographic alone showed a seven percent infection rate, with 33% of African American men who were HIV positive reportedly contracting the virus through heterosexual contact.

Three percent African American women in the District are HIV positive, the report says, due to increasing transmission through heterosexual contact.

Among Caucasians, over three-quarters of HIV cases (78%) were among men who have sex with men; among Latinos, sexual contact among men accounted for 49% of infections, the article said.

Only one ward out of the District’s eight wards did not reflect an increase in HIV/AIDS rates, a development that the report anticipated would "have significant implications on the District’s health care system," the article reported.

A separate report prepared by George Washington University’s School of Health and Health Services looks more closely at heterosexual transmission of HIV, noting that only three out of ten heterosexual respondents reported using condoms during their most recent sexual encounters, while three out of five said that they knew whether they were HIV positive or negative.

The National Institutes of Health’s infectious diseases program director was quoted in the article.

Added Fauci, "And remember, the city’s numbers are just based on people who’ve gotten tested."

Said D.C. resident Ron Simmons, a gay African American, "You have a high incidence of HIV among African Americans, and a lot of African Americans live in the city."

Simmons, who the article said is with a support group, went on to say, "D.C. also has a high number of gay men, and HIV is high among gay black men."

Said Charlene Cotton, a D.C. resident who was diagnosed as positive five years ago, "You need to start at home and talk about it."

Added Cotton, "It’s so hush-hush."

Said Washington, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, "In order to solve an issue as complex as HIV and AIDS, you have to step up," the article said.

"It’s the mayor and certainly other elected officials. But it’s also the community.

"You have this problem affecting us, and you tell people how serious it is and it literally goes in one ear and out the other."

But D.C. city councilor David Catina, who chairs the city council’s health committee, had hard words for the District’s government, saying, "Frankly, there can be no excuse for the state of the HIV/AIDS Administration that I found in 2005.

"I cannot speak to why it was not a priority previously" added Catina. "For years prior to 2005, mayors and previous individuals allowed things to exist in an unacceptable way.

"And I do blame this government for part of the epidemic we’re confronting," Catina added.

The article said that the AIDS Office had lacked resources, and that the office’s critics had voiced doubts about the way its existing resources had been used.

Also called into question was a Congressional ban on using District tax revenue for needle exchange programs, possibly driving the infection rate higher. The article noted that the ban had been rescinded in 2008.

The one bright spot in the report was an indication that more people are getting tested, leading to earlier detection for those who are HIV positive. Early detection and medication is crucial in ensuring that HIV positive individuals live longer lives and enjoy better health.

The article tied the improvement in early detection to the fact that publicly funded testing had enjoyed a 70% increase over the last three years.

Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.

Global7 the new Millennial Renaissance Vision for the Globe,
Our Passion is to reach our individual and collective potential-Always!

Millennium Wellness Enterprises, inc

Wellness can be a profitable enterprise as well people and fit people can continue to be productive, creative and enterprising. Sick people tend to be disabled and lose their productivity over time.

So, it is sound business practice and social practice to stay healthy, well and fit.

Unfortunately, we do not spend time on getting fit, healthy and well as these attributes are not converted into risk management insurance premiums and have value attached to them.

As a result, the medical industry is creating disease via vaccines, to imitate disease and sell the product as beneficial to the unsuspecting public via highly exaggerated scientific credo that has not been yet proven of its benefits.

The scientific tools and models of Risk assessment demand, the pragmatic use of Scientific tools such as Research Pyramid, CORT Analysis, NDSIM, 3As and 3Es and FoC as well as Option Appraisals.

Risk management strategy demands that we under take, Research Pyramid questions of what, why, how, who, when and where to understand the cause and effect relationships. CORT Analysis demands that we look at challenges, opportunities, risks and threats in detail and convert our challenges into opportunities. Most importantly the NDSIM, the Needs, Demands, Supply Interaction Model demands that we look at the question of 3As and 3Es, that is Accessibility, Afford ability, Accountability, in line with Equity, Efficiency and Effectiveness and their delivery in an environment of Freedom of Choice.

Option Appraisal science demands that we look at options and alternatives as well as making choices in the principle of Best Option, Win-Win Option and Compromise Option for an improved opportunity of success.

So, where does vaccine science fall within this bigger picture of empirical science for wellness and optimum health.

It is important to consider wellness science as an alternative to health science, as traditional perspectives have converted health science into sickness science.

The Medical profession is about producing medicines, marketing them and selling them to the public to make profit. However, this does not sound enlightened, so disease and sickness will be through in the mix to make it sound scientific and beneficial to humanity. After all, we are
talking about recovery or the healing profession.

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(NaturalNews) As someone with a good deal of education in scientific thinking and the scientific method, I have put considerable effort into attempting to find any real scientific evidence backing the widespread use of influenza vaccines (flu season shots). Before learning about nutrition and holistic health, I was a computer software entrepreneur, and I have a considerable scientific background in areas such as astronomy, physics, human physiology, microbiology, genetics, anthropology and human psychology. One of my most-admired thought leaders is, in fact, the late physicist Richard Feynman.

I don't speak from a "scientific" point of view on NaturalNews very often because it's often a dry, boring presentation style. But I do know the difference between real science and junk science, and I find examples of junk science in both the "scientific" side of things as well as the "alternative" side of things.

For example, so-called "psychic surgery," as least in the way it has been popularized, is nothing more than clever sleight-of-hand where the surgeon palms some chicken gizzards and then pretends to pull diseased organs out of the abdominal cavity of some patient. The demonstrations I've seen on film are obvious quackery.

Similarly, flu season vaccines are mainstream medicine's version of psychic surgery: It's all just "medical sleight of hand" based on nothing more than clever distractions and the obfuscation of scientific facts. Flu season shots, you see, simply don't work on 99 out of 100 people (and that's being generous to the vaccine industry, as you'll see below).

A year ago, I offered a $10,000 reward to any person who could find scientific proof that H1N1 vaccines were safe and effective (http://www.naturalnews.com/027985_H...). No one even made a claim to collect that reward because no such evidence exists.

Conventional medicine, they say, is really "Evidence-Based Medicine" (EBM). That is, everything promoted by conventional medicine is supposed to be based on "rigorous scientific scrutiny." It's all supposed to be statistically validated and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it works as advertised. And in the case of flu vaccines, they are advertised as providing some sort of absolute protection against influenza. "Don't miss work this flu season. Get a flu shot!" The idea, of course, is that getting a flu shot offers 100% protection from the flu. If you get a shot, they say, you won't miss work from sickness.

This implication is wildly inaccurate. In fact, it's just flat-out false. As you'll see below, it's false advertising wrapped around junk science.

You see, there was never an independent, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study proving either the safety or effectiveness of the H1N1 swine flu vaccines that were heavily pushed last year (and are in fact in this year's flu shot cocktail). No such study has ever been done. As a result, there is no rigorous scientific basis from which to sell such vaccines in the first place.

To try to excuse this, vaccine hucksters claim that it would be "unethical" to conduct a placebo-controlled study of such vaccines because they work so well that to deny the placebo group the actual vaccine would be harmful to them. Everybody benefits from the influenza vaccine, they insist, so the mere act of conducting a scientifically-controlled test is unethical.

Do you smell some quackery at work yet? This is precisely the kind of pseudoscientific gobbledygook you might hear from some mad Russian scientist who claims to have "magic water" but you can't test the magic water because the mere presence of measurement instruments nullifies the magical properties of the water.

Similarly, vaccine pushers often insist it's unethical to test whether their vaccines really work. You just have to "take it on faith" that vaccines are universally good for everybody.

Yep, I used the word "faith." That is essentially what the so-called scientific community is invoking here with the vaccine issue: Just BELIEVE they work, everybody! Who needs scientific evidence when we've got FAITH in vaccines?

Forget about evidence-based medicine. Forget about any rational cost-benefit analysis. Forget about the risk-to-benefit ratio calculations that should be part of any rational decision making about vaccines. No, the vaccine industry (and its apologist bloggers) already know that vaccines are universally good for you, therefore no such rigorous scientific assessment is even required!

The Scientific Method, in other words, doesn't really apply to the things they already believe in. Faith can override reason in the "scientific" community, if you can believe that! What's next, are they going to claim vaccines work because some sort of "vaccine God" makes them work?

Here, take your vaccine shot. And don't forget to pray to the Vaccine God because that's how these things really work. Vaccine voodoo, in other words. (Hey, that would have been a great title for the vaccine song, come to think of it...)

Unethical to find out if they work?

I got to wondering about the whole explanation of how it would be "unethical" to test whether the H1N1 vaccines actually work. This deflection strikes me as particularly odd, because it comes with an implied follow-up statement. Here's what they're actually saying when they invoke this excuse:

#1) It is "unethical" to conduct placebo-controlled studies on seasonal flu vaccines to find out if they actually work.

#2) But at the same time, it is entirely ethical to give these shots to hundreds of millions of people, even while lacking any real evidence that they are safe or effective.

In other words, it's unethical to conduct any real science, but entirely ethical to just keep injecting people with a substance that might be entirely useless (or even harmful). That's just a hint of the kind of warped logic and failed ethics that typify our modern vaccine industry.

Vaccine advocates claim that H1N1 vaccines are so effective that NOT giving vaccines to a placebo group would "put their lives at risk." That alone is apparently enough reason to avoid conducting any real science on these vaccines.

But I'm not buying this. I think it's just a cover story -- an excuse to avoid subjecting such vaccines to rigorous scientific inquiry because, deep down inside, they know vaccines would be revealed as an elaborate medical fraud.

So I poked around to see if there were other randomized studies being conducted that might actually put people's lives at risk. It didn't take long to find some. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine recently published two studies regarding post heart-attack patient cooling which seeks to minimize brain damage by physically lowering the temperature of the brain of the heart attack patient until they can reach the acute care technicians at a nearby hospital.

In two studies, researchers who already knew that "cooling" would save lives nevertheless subjected 350 heart attack patient to a randomized study protocol that assigned comatose (but resuscitated) patients to either "cooling" temperatures or normal temperatures.

In one study, while half the cooled patients recovered with normal brain function, only a quarter of those exposed to normal temperatures did. In other words, patient cooling saved their brains. And yet the importance of knowing whether or not this procedure really worked was apparently enough to justify withholding the treatment from over a hundred other patients, most of whom suffered permanent brain damage as a result.

You see, when scientists really want to know the answers to questions like, "Does this brain cooling work?" they have no qualms about subjecting people to things like permanent brain damage in a randomized clinical trial. The knowledge gained from such an experiment is arguably worth the loss of a few patient brains because, armed with scientific evidence, such procedures can be rolled out to help save the brains of potentially hundreds of thousands of patients in subsequent years.

But when it comes to testing vaccines like the recent H1N1 variety, the official explanation is that it's too dangerous to withhold vaccines from a treatment group. They say it's not really important to determine if vaccines are statistically validated, and it's not worth the "risk" of withholding vaccines from anyone in a randomized clinical trial.

Now, sure, there have been some clinical trials done on many different vaccines over the years, but most of those are industry funded, and there are almost never rigorous trials conducted on each year's seasonal flu vaccines before they are released for public consumption. As a result, each year's vaccine is a brand new experiment, carried out across the guinea pig masses of patients who just do whatever they're told without questioning whether it's backed by real science.

Because, of course, it isn't. And I'm not the only one who recognizes this inconvenient fact.

The Cochrane Collaboration

The Cochrane Collaboration, as described on its own website, is, "...an international, independent, not-for-profit organization of over 28,000 contributors from more than 100 countries, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of health care readily available worldwide."

"We are world leaders in evidence-based health care," the site goes on to say, followed by a quote from The Lancet which states, "The Cochrane Collaboration is an enterprise that rivals the Human Genome Project in its potential implications for modern medicine."

Working for the Cochrane Collaboration, an epidemiologist named Dr. Tom Jefferson decided to take a close look at the scientific evidence behind influenza vaccines (seasonal flu vaccines).

The objectives of the study were to: "Identify, retrieve and assess all studies evaluating the effects of vaccines against influenza in healthy adults."

Selection Criteria (for inclusion in the study): "Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-RCTs comparing influenza vaccines with placebo or no intervention in naturally-occurring influenza in healthy individuals aged 16 to 65 years. We also included comparative studies assessing serious and rare harms."

The Total Scope of the study encompassed over 70,000 people. And just so you know, these the results may strongly favor the vaccine industry. The author even went out of his way to warn that "15 out of 36 trials [were] funded by industry (four had no funding declaration)."

In other words, close to half of the studies included in this analysis were funded by the vaccine industry itself, which as we know consistently manipulates data, bribes researchers or otherwise engages in scientific fraud in order to get the results they want.

The author even goes on to warn how industry-funded studies always get more press, saying, "...industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size."

See the study detail page at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/co...

Study results show influenza vaccines are nearly worthless

Now here comes the interesting part: Even though nearly half the studies were funded by the vaccine industry itself, the study results show that in most circumstances, influenza vaccines are virtually worthless:

"The corresponding figures [of people showing influenza symptoms] for poor vaccine matching were 2% and 1% (RD 1, 95% CI 0% to 3%)" say the study authors. And by "poor vaccine matching," they mean that the strain of influenza viruses in the vaccine are a poor match for the strains circulating in the wild. This is usually the case in the real world because the vaccine only incorporates last year's viral strains and cannot predict which strains will be circulating this year.

In other words, you would have to vaccinate 100 people to reduce the number of people showing influenza symptoms by just one. For ninety-nine percent of the people vaccinated, the vaccine makes no difference at all!

In a "best case" scenario when the viral strain in the influenza vaccine just happens to match the strain circulating in the wild -- a situation that even the study authors call "uncommon" -- the results were as follows: "4% of unvaccinated people versus 1% of vaccinated people developed influenza symptoms (risk difference (RD) 3%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2% to 5%)."

In other words, the matching vaccine (which is uncommon in the real world) reduced influenza infections in 3 out of 100 people. Or, put another way, 97% of those injected with the vaccine received no benefit (and no different outcome).

• "Vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalized or working days lost."

• "The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions..."

• "There is no evidence that [influenza vaccines] affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission." (Got that? Vaccines do not affect transmission of the disease, yet that's the whole reason vaccines are pushed so heavily during pandemics -- to block disease transmission.)

• "In average conditions (partially matching vaccine) 100 people need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms."

And finally, the study author's summary concludes with this whopper of a statement: "Our results may be an optimistic estimate because company-sponsored influenza vaccines trials tend to produce results favorable to their products and some of the evidence comes from trials carried out in ideal viral circulation and matching conditions and because the harms evidence base is limited."

In other words, taking into account the industry bias, the actual results may be that vaccines prevent influenza symptoms in only 1 out of 1,000 people.

Putting it in perspective

So let's put all this in perspective in a rational, intelligent way. This far-reaching analysis of influenza vaccine trials shows that under common conditions, seasonal influenza vaccines have no benefit for 99 out of 100 people.

Furthermore, even this result is describe as being "an optimistic estimate" because nearly half of the vaccine trials were funded by the vaccine industry which tends to "produce results favorable to their products."

Furthermore, some of the studies were carried out in "ideal" viral matching scenarios that rarely happen in the real world.

And finally, some evidence of harm from vaccines was simply thrown out of this analysis, resulting in a "harms evidence base" that was quite limited and likely doesn't reveal the full picture.

Are you getting all this? Even with industry-funded studies likely distorting the results in their favor, if you take a good hard look at the scientific evidence surrounding the effectiveness of vaccines, you quickly come to realize that influenza vaccines don't work on 99 out of 100 people. (And the real answer may be even worse.)

Now that's a far cry from the false advertising of the vaccine industry, which implies that if you get a shot you're "protected" from influenza. They claim you won't miss work, you'll stay well, and so on. Through these messages, they are cleverly implying that vaccines work on 100% of the people.

But based on the available scientific evidence, these are blatantly false statements. And the wild exaggeration of the supposed benefits from vaccines crosses the threshold of "misleading advertising" and enters the realm of "criminal marketing fraud." Where is the FTC or FDA on speaking out against this quackery?

Vaccine marketing is, essentially, scientific fraud. To claim that vaccines protect everyone when, in reality, they may reduce symptoms in only one out of 100 people is intellectually dishonest and downright fraudulent.

It is, simply put, just pure B.S. quackery.

Now, imagine if an herbal product were advertised on television as offering some health benefit, but it turned out that the product only worked on 1 out of 100 people who took it. That herbal product would be widely branded as "quackery" and the company selling it would be accused of false advertising. The company owners might even be charged with criminal fraud.

But vaccines get a free pass on this issue. While an herbal product might be heavily investigated or even confiscated by the FDA, vaccines that only work on 1% of the people receive the full backing of the FDA, CDC, WHO, FTC and local hospitals and clinics to boot. The fact that the vaccine is pure quackery apparently doesn't matter to any of these organizations: It's full speed ahead, regardless of what the science actually says.

Once you understand all this, you now understand why it is an accurate statement to say "The FDA promotes medical fraud."

Similarly, "The CDC promotes medical fraud." As does the WHO.

These are scientifically accurate statements, assuming you agree that a product that only works on 1 out of 100 people fits the definition of "fraud" when it is marketed as if it helped everyone. And most people would agree with that reasonable definition of fraud.

It's a totally different story if the efficacy ratio is higher. If influenza vaccines actually produced some benefit in 25 out of 100 people, that might be worth considering. But it's nowhere near that.

The FDA, by the way, will often approve pharmaceuticals that only produce results in 5 percent of the clinical trial subjects. The world of modern medicine, in fact, is full of pharmaceuticals that simply don't work on 95% of the patients who take them.

With these study results in mind, take a look at some of the lyrics in my recent hip hop song, "Vaccine Zombie" (http://www.naturalnews.com/vaccine_...)

I forgot how to think for myself
I don't understand a thing about health
I do the same as everyone else
I'm a vaccine zombie, zombie

Now you can see where these lyrics come from. If influenza vaccines are worthless for 99 percent of those who receive them, then why are people lining up to get injected?

The answer is because they fail to think critically about vaccines and their health. They don't understand health, so they just go along with everybody else and do what they're told. Hence their earning of the "Vaccine Zombie" designation.

The song goes on to say:

I'm a sucker for the ads, a sucker for the labs
A sucker for the swine flu jabs
and I don't mind followin' a medical fad
Cause livin' without a brain ain't half bad

Yes, people who line up for influenza vaccines are "suckers" who have been bamboozled by fraudulent vaccine propaganda. But they're following a "medical fad" and it's easier to just do what you're told rather than engage your brain and think critically about what you're doing.

"Livin' without a brain ain't half bad" because it takes the burden of decision making out of the loop and allows you to just rely on whatever the doctors and health officials tell you to do.

How the scientific community lost touch with real science

But what if they were all lying to you? Or what if they, themselves, were ignorant about the fact that influenza vaccines are worthless on 99% of those who receive them? (Very few doctors and scientists, it turns out, are aware of this simple truth.)

Or what if the vaccine pushers had all convinced themselves of a falsehood? What if they truly believed that vaccines were really, really good for everyone but that belief was based on wishful thinking rather than rigorous scientific review?

Because that, my friends, is exactly what has happened. We have an entire segment of the scientific community that has been suckered into vaccine propaganda. They've convinced themselves that seasonal flu shots really work and that virtually everyone should be injected with such shots. And they believe this based on irrational faith, not on scientific thinking or rigorous statistical evidence.

They are, in other words, pursuing a vaccine religion (or cult). The is especially curious, given that most vaccine pushers don't believe in God or any organized religion -- except for their own vaccine religion, where real scientific evidence isn't required. All you gotta do is believe in vaccines and you can join their religion, too.

And so all across the 'net, so-called "science bloggers" embarrass themselves by promoting near-useless influenza vaccines as "evidence-based medicine," apparently unaware that the evidence shows such vaccines to be all but worthless.

They might as well say they support vaccines "Just 'cuz."

And "just 'cuz" is no reason to inject yourself with a chemical cocktail that even the industry admits causes extremely dangerous neurological side effects in a small number of vaccine recipients.

Vitamin D would actually make vaccines work better

To top this all off, here's the real kicker of this story: You can beat the minimal protective benefits of vaccines with a simple, low-cost vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D, you see, is the nutrient that activates your immune system to fight off infectious disease. Without it, vaccines hardly work at all.

In fact, the very low rate of vaccine efficacy (1%) is almost certainly due to the fact that most people receiving the vaccines are vitamin D deficient. (Anywhere from 75% - 95% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D, depending on whom you ask.)

Hilariously, the way to make vaccines work better would be to hand out vitamin D supplements to go along with the shots! Even more hilariously, if people were taking vitamin D supplements, they wouldn't need the vaccine shots in the first place!

Influenza vaccines, in other words, have no important role whatsoever in preventing influenza infections. This goal can be accomplished more safely, reliably and at far lower cost by promoting vitamin D supplements for the population at large.

What we really need to see from the scientific world is a study comparing vitamin D supplements to influenza vaccines (and using realistic vitamin D doses, not just 200 or 400 IUs per day). I have absolutely no doubt that healthy-dose vitamin D supplementation (4000 IUs a day) would prove to be significantly more effective than influenza vaccines at preventing flu infections.

But such a study will almost certainly never be done (at least not anytime soon) because it would expose the false propaganda of the vaccine industry while giving consumers a far better way of protecting themselves from influenza that doesn't involve paying money to vaccine manufacturers.

In medicine, as in war, truth is often the first casualty. And when the lies are repeated with enough frequency, they begin to be believed. The flu shot lie has been repeated with such ferocity and apparent authority that it has snookered in virtually the entire "scientific" community.

That even rational-minded scientists can be so easily hoodwinked by the vaccine industry is causing more and more people to question the credibility of not just modern medicine, but the entire scientific community as well.

Because if so-called "rational" scientists and thought leaders can be so easily suckered into an obvious falsehood, what other fictions might they be promoting as fact?

Medicine, you see, makes all the other sciences look bad. The obvious scientific fraud going on in the name of "science" in the pharmaceutical industry makes a mockery of real scientific thought. The ease of which medical scientists have been hoodwinked by the drug industry calls into question the rationality of all sciences.

And in doing so, it brings up an even bigger question: Is science the best path to gaining knowledge in the first place? This is obviously a philosophical question, not a scientific question, and it's beyond the scope of this article, but it's one I will likely visit here on NaturalNews very soon in an upcoming article.

There are many paths to truth, you see. Science -- good science -- is one of them, but it is not the only one. Any scientist who believes that science has a monopoly on all knowledge is himself a fool. Just read a little Feynman and you'll quickly come to discover that the very brightest minds in the history of science consistently recognized there were other pathways leading to truth.

I believe if Feynman were alive today and saw the vaccine propaganda taking place in the name of "science," he would respond with something like, "Surely you're joking."

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About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles.

Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes.

In 2010, Adams launched NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video site featuring videos on holistic health and green living. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the CEO of a highly successful email newsletter software company that develops software used to send permission email campaigns to subscribers.

Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com.

Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known as the 'Health Ranger,' Adams' personal health statistics and mission statements are located at www.HealthRanger.org

President Barack Obama is distantly related to two of his most outspoken critics -- Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin and talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh -- as well as to former President George W. Bush, according to a genealogy website.

Family trees revealed Obama and Palin, the former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, are 10th cousins through common ancestor John Smith, according to Ancestry.com Inc. Smith was Obama’s and Palin’s 12th-great- grandfather. Smith, a Protestant pastor, was an early settler in Massachusetts and was criticized by the ecclesiastical community for supporting Quakers, said Anastasia Tyler, a genealogist for the website.

Obama and Limbaugh are 10th cousins once removed through shared connections to Richmond Terrell, a Virginia settler who came to America in the mid-1600s, Tyler said.

Palin and Obama have ties to Bush, both through links to Samuel Hinckley. Maybe leadership “runs in the family,” the website said, because Hinckley’s son, Thomas, became the governor of Plymouth Colony before it united with Massachusetts.

“Despite political differences, they do have similarities,” Tyler said. “We are all tied together; we are all part of America.”

The family-tree website also found that Palin is related to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and author and commentator Ann Coulter. The three are tied to John Lathrop, an Englishman who was banished to Boston after he served as minister of an illegal church independent of the Church of England, Tyler said.

Family Trees

Tyler’s team at Provo, Utah-based Ancestry.com works on discovering famous relations to show how people can build family trees from the site, using its library of 5 billion historical records.

“We are always looking for ways to show how interesting family history can be,” Tyler said.

The site has previously linked Obama to billionaire Warren Buffett and actor Brad Pitt. It also found family ties between Palin and Princess Diana.

To contact the reporter on this story: Traci McMillan in Washington at tmcmillan1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva in Washington at msilva34@bloomberg.net.

October 4, 2010 6:43 p.m. EDT
Brendan Harley and his wife, Kathryn Clancy, had their daughter, Joan, through in vitro fertilization.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

In vitro fertilization, once controversial, is practically an everyday procedure today
About 1 percent of infants born in U.S. are conceived through assisted reproduction
High cost of in vitro is still prohibitive for many couples
Next goal is to improve the success rate, reduce multiple births
(CNN) -- Brendan Harley beat cancer once as an infant, then faced leukemia as a teen. He survived, but the illnesses left him infertile and feeling guilty.

"He knew that I wanted children and was excited to have children, and I think he was sad that he was complicating things," said Harley's wife, Kathryn Clancy, 31. "But if anything, I feel like things just worked out so wonderfully that there was just no need to be upset."
Clancy and Harley, both assistant professors at the University of Illinois, now have a 2 ½-year-old daughter, Joan. She was conceived through in vitro fertilization, a technology that involves combining sperm and egg outside the body and implanting the resulting embryos.

"You look at this child and you think, 'How could my life be any different?' I can't imagine how sad I'd be if this wasn't how my life looked right now," said Clancy, a biological anthropologist.

Just a few decades ago, the technology that allowed Joan to be born didn't exist. One of its creators, Robert G. Edwards, won the Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday. Many families and doctors said it's a well-earned prize that brought precious lives into the world.
Share your 'test-tube baby' story: Send an iReport
"Bob Edwards certainly made a major impact on what we do we do every day, and the four million babies born as a result," said Dr. James Goldfarb, president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology and director of infertility services at the Cleveland Clinic Health Systems.
In vitro fertilization technology has evolved since the first successful birth in 1978, Goldfarb said, but he uses another word to describe the work of Edwards and his partner, Dr. Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988: Revolution.

Robert G. Edwards wins Nobel Prize

Today, about 1 percent of infants born in the United States are conceived through assisted reproductive technologies, and 99 percent of those use in vitro fertilization, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported in 2009. It's a medical procedure the public knows, doctors said, and infertile couples expect for it to be on the list of treatments.
They're well-aware that since 1978, miracles have been possible.
Controversial births
The first baby ever born through IVF was Louise Joy Brown, delivered through a Caesarean section on July 25, 1978, at a hospital in England. She gave birth to a son in 2006.

Elizabeth Comeau, born Elizabeth Jordan Carr in 1981, was the first so-called "test tube baby" in the United States, and recently had a child of her own.

"It was extremely exciting to hear about it and know that it could be achieved," she said.
Early on, Edwards' and Steptoe's work on in vitro fertilization met opposition from some government officials, who were concerned with potential overpopulation, and some religious groups. Catholic church leaders have long opposed in vitro fertilization because, they said, it depersonalizes conception and disposes of some embryos, which they argue is the equivalent to abortion.

Doctors remember protesters at medical conventions and fertility clinics that struggled to stay open. Now, they said, curiosity and science fiction-style reporting have calmed. Families celebrate unlikely births, schools might have multiple sets of twins and triplets and the first babies born through in vitro fertilization are having their own babies the natural way.

"I don't think it's a stigma to parents or the child," said Dr. Louis DePaolo, chief of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Reproductive Sciences Branch. "There are couples who go through hell, the stress of infertility and going through these treatments. There's no question [why they do it] -- the desire to have a family."

A costly procedure

The barrier for many couples now is cost. One round of in vitro fertilization can cost about $15,000. Many insurance policies don't cover it, and some couples require more than one attempt.
Kathryn Clancy's child, Joan, was born through a procedure that combined Clancy's egg with the sperm from one of Harley's brothers. Harley's other brother had been a bone marrow donor when he had leukemia at 17.
Clancy and Harley met with a fertility specialist in January 2007. The following six months were a mix of paperwork, testing, hormones and medications to prepare Clancy's body for the embryo transfer. The process of injecting herself frightened Clancy, so her husband did it for her the first week; cancer had made him comfortable with needles.

The first trimester was scariest, Clancy said. Early on, she had cramps and fears of a miscarriage. But the process worked on the first try, with a single embryo.
Joan Adele Clancy-Harley was born after a natural labor at a midwife-attended birth center in Massachusetts. It was a "textbook" pregnancy and a nonmedical end to an intense medical experience, Clancy noted.

Next challenges

Those are the types of fertility stories doctors like.

The in vitro process has been simplified to ease the initial removal of a woman's eggs, to help men with low numbers of sperm and to use the most viable embryos. Long-term studies have shown that children born as a result of in vitro fertilization are as healthy as children born after natural conception. Still, not all attempts are successful and not all pregnancies go smoothly.
Some doctors transfer more than one embryo to improve chances of a pregnancy, but multiple births can lead to greater risks during pregnancy and after delivery. Widespread attention to Nadya Suleman, the mother of octuplets born in California in 2009, has led to more discussions about ethics and limits of in vitro fertilization.

Doctors say the goals now are to improve the success rate, especially for older parents, while reducing the number of multiple births. Then there's the bigger question: How to prevent or treat infertility altogether?

"We're bypassing. The couples are still infertile," DePaolo said. "We need to pursue the root causes of infertility and have better treatments, and ameliorate the major reasons to need in vitro fertilization."

That, they said, could be the work of future Nobel Prize.
CNN's Madison Park contributed to this report.

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